"Meticulous psychological characterizations, accurate descriptions of the environment, the tense struggle between superstition, religion and reason, and a good dose of tension: these are the literary ingredients that make of this Fontane novel one of the best representatives of the genre of the detective novel.
"There is something especially suggestive in his style, and especially in his old days; the joy, the feeling of warmth, the satisfaction that awakens each line of his letters, each bit of dialogue of his, are complete. This prose is so light, so luminous, and at the same time of such affable parsimony with its secret tendency to the ballad's tone, its abbreviations to at the same time colloquial and poetic, a high but comfortable air; it possesses, together with an apparent flatness, composure and content, an interior form, as it only occurs after a long poetic exercise ...read more
